JCGuys wrote:The best way to make sure Ward F is affordable is to ensure there is an abundant supply of new housing being created in other wards. If rents are rising every year, it means there is not enough new supply hitting the market. Ward F residents should strongly encourage that development take place in the city's hot spots (downtown and Journal Square).

You have the right idea, but unfortunately JC is a small piece of the metro RE ecosystem. No one is building significant amounts of affordable housing, most is luxury, though that does have a trickle down effect.

As has been discussed here before, one of the biggest obstacles to increasing affordable housing is density zoning, both here and in the burbs. Take your typical 50x100 double lot in a R1 zone, R1 is most of JC. You could build a 20 unit building there easily. But R1 limits it to 35 ft high and 2 units, so you get 2 ugly Bayonne boxes, each 2 units, and fairly pricey given what crap they are because the fixed costs of construction are being concentrated in so few units.

I agree with everything you said. JC is a small piece of the metro region, but it's the only place we have direct control over.

Plus the only way to get more moderately priced housing built is for a gross abundant oversupply in the luxury market. Developers will always chase after the highest return - and at some point - developers will switch their attention to more moderately priced units because they can't hit their margins in the luxury market due to an oversupply.

That's starting to happen a little bit in the ultra luxury market in Manhattan. There is also a theory that if a high income resident moves into a new luxury building, that frees up their current, more moderately priced residence for those with more moderate incomes. I do believe in this theory, strictly from a supply and demand point of view, but the literature on it is thin.

I'll give JC a B+ for increasing the housing supply. NYC gets a C-. And everyone else in the metro area gets a fat F.

JCGuys wrote:The best way to make sure Ward F is affordable is to ensure there is an abundant supply of new housing being created in other wards. If rents are rising every year, it means there is not enough new supply hitting the market. Ward F residents should strongly encourage that development take place in the city's hot spots (downtown and Journal Square).

You have the right idea, but unfortunately JC is a small piece of the metro RE ecosystem. No one is building significant amounts of affordable housing, most is luxury, though that does have a trickle down effect.

As has been discussed here before, one of the biggest obstacles to increasing affordable housing is density zoning, both here and in the burbs. Take your typical 50x100 double lot in a R1 zone, R1 is most of JC. You could build a 20 unit building there easily. But R1 limits it to 35 ft high and 2 units, so you get 2 ugly Bayonne boxes, each 2 units, and fairly pricey given what crap they are because the fixed costs of construction are being concentrated in so few units.

The best way to make sure Ward F is affordable is to ensure there is an abundant supply of new housing being created in other wards. If rents are rising every year, it means there is not enough new supply hitting the market. Ward F residents should strongly encourage that development take place in the city's hot spots (downtown and Journal Square).

Is the finish line moving for Jersey City's Ward F residents? | Morgan

One of the African-American female protagonists in the Academy Award-nominated movie, "Hidden Figures," made a succinct comment after learning that the two college degrees she held were no longer adequate for enrolling in the NASA engineer training program.

She was told that she would now have to take additional courses only available at a racially segregated Virginia school she could not attend. Her response, in a voice frustrated voice, was "Every time we try to accomplish something, they move the finish line."

That sentiment has been felt by African-Americans for much of their sojourn in this country. The end of the Civil War was supposed mark the end of chattel slavery and bring the right to vote. It was stymied in the south by the Ku Klux Klan.

Eventually a form of peonage replaced chattel slavery, just as onerous to black freedom as conditions that existed before the war.

New laws passed across the country to prevent non-existent voter fraud once again threaten to impede African-Americans from exercising their franchise.

Currently in urban areas like Jersey City, black citizens are becoming increasingly anxious as they watch their neighborhoods rapidly gentrify, pushing rents, taxes and housing prices far above their ability to pay.